


The Apology

by wendymarlowe



Series: Dear John [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, I promise it gets better, M/M, Missing Scene, Painful road to reconciliation, Smut, apology, not as dubcon as it looks at first
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-11 07:41:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3319484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendymarlowe/pseuds/wendymarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Companion scene for "Dear John."  Sherlock shows up at 221B, as requested, ready to either apologize or beg.  (Will make more sense if you've read "Dear John" first.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Deutsch available: [The Apology](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5976466) by [Shinnington](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinnington/pseuds/Shinnington)
  * Translation into Čeština available: [Omluva](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13615491) by [LilyElfgreen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyElfgreen/pseuds/LilyElfgreen)



Sherlock approached 221B with a deep sense of dread he hadn’t entirely anticipated. Speedy’s was closed for the day already, and foot traffic had thinned to nothing with the temperature falling to just above freezing when the sun set nearly three hours ago. From the street level, he could just barely see a corner of the ceiling and the living room wallpaper through the window - only one lamp on, then, the one on the desk. Somewhere up there John was waiting. It felt like they were the only two souls on Baker Street.

The door was bolted, but Sherlock was spared the indignity of having to pick his own lock by Mycroft’s forethought: Sherlock’s old key had magically appeared in the pocket of his coat sometime between when he had left his brother’s house and now. Hopefully it wouldn’t be actually necessary to _thank_ Mycroft, but Sherlock turned and gave the nearest surveillance camera a curt nod anyway before pushing open the door and stepping inside.

Everything was oppressively silent. Logical conclusion, Mrs. Hudson was out - just as well, since Sherlock was still supposed to be dead. Would have to be “dead” for a while longer, until his name could be cleared and the inevitable media frenzy controlled. He climbed the stairs as quietly as possible, toward the open door to 221B.

 _John._ Not such a sneaky entrance, then - John was waiting for him, arms akimbo, feet shoulder-width apart in a classic alpha challenge posture which made Sherlock want to curl at his feet and hug his legs until John forgave him. Not that he deserved it, after all he had done, but this was _John_ and his ability to forgive anything, everything, was practically magical in its limitlessness. Not that the current combination of _livid_ and _determined_ really boded well. Sherlock stepped further into the room and closed the door behind him out of long-buried habit which had, at one time, pleased John. The carefully-prepared apology he’d worked so hard on for weeks was teasing him, dancing around just outside his ability to remember the words, the proper intonation-

“Stop.” John lowered his chin slightly, his glare burning hot and accusatory. “I don’t want whatever measured bullshit you’ve planned out ahead of time. Just answer me this: did you mean what you said these last few months?”

Sherlock didn’t trust his voice. He nodded.

“So all of that ‘I never lied to you’ crap - you were serious about that.”

Sherlock nodded again. John’s posture was stiff and guarded - every inch the dangerous soldier. Meticulously controlled, as long as Sherlock didn’t make any sudden moves or say the wrong thing-

“You do know,” John continued in a carefully clipped cadence, “that lies by omission are still lies, right?”

Sherlock licked his lips and fought for the right words. “I couldn’t - I was taking a huge risk by contacting you at all. I couldn’t tell you I was alive. I _couldn’t_.”

“And yet you still managed to drag confessions out of me. Things I’ve never told anyone else. Things I never _could_ tell anyone else. Tell me, Sherlock: was that because you were bored? Or,” he lowered his voice to nearly a rumble, “was it because because you really do want me to pin you to the door? To stroke you and suck you until you’re breathless and boneless under my hands?” He advanced forward, claiming his territory in the room as he approached. A general in the midst of battle. “I want to hear you say it,” he growled. “Was that a lie?”

 _Oh god._ Sherlock felt wood against his fingertips, belatedly realized he had fallen back against the closed door and was shrinking against it. The realization did nothing to enable him to stop. He swallowed hard and very deliberately shook his head no.

“I want to hear you say it,” John repeated, stalking the last few steps until he really did have Sherlock’s body pinned the door and he was practically breathing his words in Sherlock’s ear. “Use that bloody voice and tell me - if I tore your clothes off now, threw you down on the sofa and had my way with you, would that be what you wanted? Or was all that just a ruse?”

“It was-” - Sherlock’s voice cracked, the first time it had done so since he was undergoing puberty. He felt himself flush, but he gamely tried again. “It was true.”

“And what about now?” John growled, lips half an inch from Sherlock’s auditory canal. The sensation of breath against the sensitive skin of his inner ear gave Sherlock full-body shivers. Of course John noticed, leaned closer, pressed their chests together, would certainly be able to feel the rapid staccato of Sherlock’s heartbeat. _“Don’t lie,”_ he murmured.

“Please.” It came out as a whisper, and Sherlock closed his eyes in embarrassment. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, John wasn’t supposed to _stalk_ him like a bloody lion after a wildebeest-

“Strip.” John stepped back suddenly and folded his arms again. Sherlock’s body swayed forward against the sudden loss as if their torsos were both magnetic, but he caught himself from falling just in time. He met John’s eyes - cold, determined, deadly - and discovered his fingers already unbuttoning his shirt without needing any input from his brain.

It was terrifying. Sherlock removed his clothing slowly, methodically. Not with any sense of seduction, merely with as much efficiency as he could muster. John wanted him to strip and so he stripped. He left everything on the floor where it landed, and John just watched placidly with his arms crossed and a ramrod-straight spine. The room was chilly without the protection of a shirt and jacket, but Sherlock willed himself not to shiver. Not from the temperature and not from John’s gaze.

“Come to the middle of the room and turn around. Slowly.” John stepped back to allow Sherlock room to pass, then resumed his military-stiff stance once Sherlock was in place. “I want to see you,” he added.

Sherlock held his hands, fingers spread and palms out, slightly away from his sides. He turned in a slow circle, painfully aware the entire time that John’s eyes never stopped flickering over his body. Cataloging the residual damage, assessing it and analyzing it. Doctor’s eyes. Most of the burns were gone now, only a slight pinkening to his skin to show where they had been, but several of the bruises were still visible. The one from John’s fist was the most lurid, a vivid purple against Sherlock’s right cheekbone. John’s gaze skipped right over it and continued its silent inspection.

“It wasn’t just a fire,” John finally said. “I’ve seen most of these before - were you in Afghanistan when you were captured?”

“Syria,” Sherlock admitted.

“Ah.” John twirled a finger, a non-verbal command for Sherlock to make another revolution. “Taking down Moriarty’s network, I assume?”

“It was the last cell. And the riskiest to get close to.”

“And you let yourself get captured.”

“I didn’t . . .” Sherlock closed his eyes. It was easier to not see John. “I didn’t want to wait any longer. To see you. I didn’t know they knew about my connection to Mycroft.”

“So you thought - what? You’d get a friendly beating and then be let go?”

Sherlock bit his lips together so hard he could taste a tiny tang of blood in his mouth, but he didn’t answer.

“That was a question, Sherlock!” John barked, just a shade shy of military. “Answer it or I walk out this door and you won’t find me again.”

Sherlock didn’t say that Mycroft could find John anywhere. He didn’t say that he would probably be throwing himself at John’s feet and clinging like a toddler before John had even gotten the door open. He did open his eyes and suck in a breath and force out the truth. “I needed to do something. After Christmas. I needed . . . I had to make progress, to get closer to you. I miscalculated.”

“And you got yourself tortured and fucking _set on fire._ ”

“The fire was mine.” Sherlock met his eyes steadily - he would not be embarrassed about this, couldn’t regret what he had done to bring himself back to John. “I broke out of the room where they were keeping me, snapped my guard’s neck, and set fire to the building. Mycroft tells me all twelve of them were eliminated. I got out before I could verify. It was a four-mile walk to get back to where my brother’s men could find me, which unfortunately made some of the damage worse.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” John stared at the ceiling for a long moment, visibly getting himself back under control. “Was that it, then?” he finally asked.

“They were the last cell. It’s not _done_ , not yet, but the danger to you is past.”

“And to you?”

“The physical danger, yes.” _Honesty - you promised honesty._ “It will be a few more weeks before I can officially come back from the dead - Mycroft’s ability to bend the laws works better when done out of the public eye. And as of right now, I’m still a suspect in several hundred murders.”

“Christ. The media is going to be a circus, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t matter.” And it didn’t, now, because John was _here_ and nothing else mattered. Sherlock was naked and the room was cold and John was still looking forbiddingly stern and it didn’t matter, none of it, because _John was here._ Listening.

And observing. John’s face went through a slow progression of expressions as he realized Sherlock’s thoughts had turned back to their current situation - resignation, realization, interest, and then a fierce _predation_ which had Sherlock’s bare arms breaking out entirely in goose pimples.

“This is it, isn’t it,” he murmured. He stalked around Sherlock in slow circles, his expression only one step short of a leer. “You want to see how much I want you? _Here._ ” He cupped a palm over his clothed crotch and thrust crudely in Sherlock’s direction. “A genuine erection, all for you. Congratulations; I guess I really am bi. Didn’t think I’d actually . . . _confirm_ it, as it were.”

Sherlock kept his feet planted and his spine straight, but he followed John’s progress with his eyes. Every time John circled around behind him and out of Sherlock’s line of sight, the hairs on the back of Sherlock’s neck prickled and his half-erection bobbed hopefully. Nothing that would have been noticeable if he had still been in a suit - but he wasn’t, he was trembling and naked in the middle of the room with a fully-clothed John Watson _assessing_ him, and damned if that didn’t turn him on so obviously that even John couldn’t help but see it.

John drew to a stop, directly behind Sherlock. He waited there for eons, not touching, just _existing_ , making Sherlock’s entire nervous system quiver. And then he traced a single fingernail from Sherlock’s tailbone all the way up to the base of his skull. Sherlock’s lungs seized and his head snapped backward as if he had been hit by a particularly sharp uppercut. He could _feel_ John’s dark chuckle behind him.

“It’s time,” John said, and tightened his grip on the nape of Sherlock’s neck to the point of not-quite-pain. “We’re going to bed, and you and I are going to do this for real.”


	2. Chapter 2

They made it to Sherlock’s old bedroom, somehow. Sherlock wasn’t entirely clear on the details, because a good ninety-nine percent of his brain was stuck in a loop: analyze John’s touch → lose all coherence → reboot → analyze John’s touch again. The quilt was already thrown back and the sheets underneath were crisp and military-neat - John’s doing, rather than Mrs. Hudson’s. John had been planning for this. Preparing. Sherlock suppressed a shiver.

“On the bed.” John urged Sherlock forward, directing him to lie face-down across the expanse of white fabric, then commenced stripping off his own jumper and shirt. He didn’t look at Sherlock as he undressed - kept his face blank, eyes on the far wall as if he were merely changing clothes. Sherlock turned his head to the side and tucked his chin against his right shoulder so he could watch without moving the rest of his body. He felt like he should speak, ought to say something _(what?),_ but this was take-no-prisoners John at his most serious and it was John’s show. Anything John wanted, he could have - he was here and that’s all Sherlock had any right to ask for. It was more than he deserved.

Two muffled thumps, John’s boots echoing against the hardwood floor as he pried them off one at a time, then a rustle of fabric and the unmistakable sound of a zipper. Sherlock blinked back the sudden appearance of tears, unexpected but ultimately uncontrollable. _Anything he wants - anything at all-_

“Hey.” John froze abruptly, his gaze locked on Sherlock’s surely-too-telling face, then he stepped out of his trousers in a rush (white cotton pants still hugging his hips) and scrambled onto the bed. “Hey, hey, hey. Sherlock. It’s okay.”

John’s gentle touch on Sherlock’s shoulder just made the tears appear faster. It was ridiculous, totally illogical to cry over this - he had made the decision to go through with whatever John wanted, it was done, so why the excess lacrimation? His transport wasn’t fully in line with his brain, obviously, but Sherlock hadn’t the faintest idea what to do about it.

“I’m sorry,” John whispered. He maneuvered his body so he could lie down alongside Sherlock, one arm thrown over Sherlock’s back, touching him skin-to-skin from shoulder to hip. “Too much? Shit - I didn’t mean to overwhelm you. Talk to me, Sherlock.”

“I just . . . I need a minute.” Sherlock resisted the urge to close his eyes and bury his face in John’s neck so John couldn’t see his tears. “Then you can keep going - I just need a minute.”

“I don’t think that’s it.” John smiled slightly, shifted his fingers from Sherlock’s shoulderblade so they could comb gently through his hair instead. “That’s not what you need - you need me to stop being such a dick and start reading you the way you’ve always read me. I was so focused on what I _thought_ was going to happen, I wasn’t paying attention to what _is_ happening.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sherlock breathed. “I owe you this - you’re angry, and you have every right to be. I had to lie to you at first because you had to believe I was dead as long as you were in danger, but after the fire, I . . . I could have told you the truth in our online chats and I _didn’t._ I couldn’t face the idea of you rejecting me and walking away and I’d have no excuse to see you again. I convinced myself that it was fine, that you wouldn’t be mad when William turned out to be me, but I . . . I knew. And I’ll take whatever I can get of you, now. The kind or the angry or the take-no-prisoners furious. Just - I need to know that someday there’s still a possibility that you’ll forgive me. Eventually.” 

John pulled back abruptly, rolling to his side and putting a foot or so of space between them. “You really think I would do that, Sherlock? That I’d use sex to punish you? I don’t even - _holy fucking hell._ ” He closed his eyes and blew out a heavy breath.

“You wouldn’t be the first,” Sherlock said softly.

“Yeah, I suspected, which makes me even _more_ of a dick for not catching on.” John reached for Sherlock’s face, hesitated, then brushed his fingertips gently over Sherlock’s bruised cheek. “I do forgive you, you know,” he murmured. “I’m still angry - _that’s_ not going away anytime soon - but I know that you’re _you_ and that’s how you’ll always be and I’m okay with it. Let’s take it a bit slower, yeah?”

Sherlock nodded, unwilling to rely on his voice to behave. He nudged his face more firmly against John’s fingers instead. John allowed his palm to cup Sherlock’s cheekbone and his fingertips to press warm and welcome against Sherlock’s temple.

“Can I kiss you now?” John whispered.

 _Oh god yes._ Sherlock lunged forward as much as he could without better leverage, pressing his lips to John’s with quite a bit more enthusiasm than finesse. He could feel John’s incredulous laugh under the onslaught, his lips widening in a smile before focusing on returning the kiss with significantly more technique than Sherlock had shown. It was utterly glorious. John’s chest was warm where it touched his own, his mouth gentle and coaxing and tantalizing all at the same time. Sherlock gave up on trying to organize the incoming stimuli and just accepted the rush of everything at once, the tastes and the smells and the sounds and the oh-so-amazing feel of John’s hands and skin and tongue and teeth and his breath huffing softly against Sherlock’s face when he finally pulled back so they could both breathe.

“Good?” John asked with a bit of a wry smile.

Sherlock just swallowed and stared. There was _so much new_ about John in just this action - if he could only break it down, file it away piece-by-piece to examine again later-

“Hey,” John said, snapping Sherlock’s attention back. “You said you wanted me to take the lead for the kissing and you would take over once we got to the . . . well, the other stuff.”

“The anal penetration, frottage, and other primarily homosexual forms of intercourse.”

John pinkened a little bit, but he didn’t immediately reject the idea either. “Yeah, that,” he mumbled. “I mean, we don’t have to do anything tonight, if you don’t want to-”

“John.” Sherlock rolled to his side to face him, so John could see the very obvious erection he was now sporting. “You know me - I always want to do _everything._ All at once. There’s so much data about you I’ve never had a chance to collect, and I assumed I never would. I’m giving you all of me - my body is just transport, I know I’ve told you that a thousand times, but I want to give you my mind as well. Everything that’s important to me. I’m not even going to try to guess what you want from me tonight, but whatever it is - you can have it. All of it.”

John blinked, once, twice. Then he placed a warm hand on either side of Sherlock’s torso and _yanked,_ hauling Sherlock over on top of him in one sudden burst of exertion. John’s arms snaked around Sherlock’s shoulders to wrap tightly, holding Sherlock down and forcing his full weight onto John’s chest. They lay like that for several seconds before Sherlock finally mustered the courage to relax into the embrace (because that’s definitely what it was, novel and comfortable and lovely).

“All I wanted was for you to not be dead,” John said softly against Sherlock’s neck, his voice strangely uneven. “The rest is just gravy.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Worth mentioning there's some French in this chapter. If you don't speak French I promise you're not missing out (John doesn't either, which is part of the point) - but “S’il te plaît” is "please." Translation at the end, if you're curious. It really does sound a lot better in French :-P

Hugging was nice, Sherlock decided. John was wonderfully solid underneath him, the pleasure of the contact all out of proportion to the actual tactile and temperature sensation against Sherlock’s skin. Sherlock eventually raised his head from John’s chest and dared another look at John’s face.

“This is new for you,” John said.

Sherlock didn’t bother to dignify that with a response. His lack of experience was probably painfully obvious, anyway. _(Experience fucking, yes. Experience being fucked, yes. Experience actually caring . . . not so much.)_

“Um.” John shifted, which called attention to the fact that despite the quiet moment, both of them were at least most of the way to erect and John’s white cotton pants were the only thing separating his penis and the bare skin of Sherlock’s stomach. “Sherlock, do you want to . . .”

 _“Yes,”_ Sherlock interrupted, and launched himself back upwards to drown out John’s question with another kiss. Because he could. Because John would _let_ him. Because John was kissing back, tongue and lips indicating just exactly how much practice he’d had kissing women who were all _not Sherlock,_ which was definitely a Not Good track for Sherlock’s mind to be going down, but he was John’s first _male_ kiss and that was a much nicer concept to think about. Sherlock moaned into John’s mouth, relishing how even that small sign of surrender had a noticeable effect on how John was starting to move beneath him. Sherlock’s own erection was pressed into John’s pants somewhere in the vicinity of John’s left ilium, but it was enough friction to feel amazing when John shifted and wriggled his hips and then settled one heavy hand on each side of Sherlock’s waist and pulled him downward, crushing their pelvises together-

“Tell me,” John murmured, breaking the kiss only as far as was absolutely necessary to speak. “Tell me what you want.”

 _“You.”_ Sherlock ducked back down to resume the kiss, but John stopped him with a palm to Sherlock’s chest.

“More specific,” John said. “We can’t - I don’t want to ruin this by making assumptions. We’ve been assuming things about each other the whole time we’ve lived together. I want you to tell me, in words.”

 _Oh._ That was different. And surprisingly logical, considering their relative positions. Sherlock had to make a conscious effort to force his brain back into some semblance of rationality. There was a lot he could say he “wanted,” both in a short-term and a long-term sense, but John’s reaction to those sorts of admissions would be highly dependant on his frame of mind, and Sherlock was not at all sure he could read John correctly. Not now. John had been so angry, so _determined_ to not let Sherlock manipulate him again-

“You’re still mad,” Sherlock said.

John blinked - that had perhaps been more of a nonsequitur than he’d expected - but then he sighed and nodded. “I can’t just turn it off, Sherlock. You lied to me - the biggest lie there is - and even though I trust that you don’t _want_ to do anything like that again, it doesn’t mean you _won’t._ I can love you and want you and yet still be mad at you. The emotions aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“You . . .” Sherlock felt like the air had just been completely knocked out of his lungs. “You love me?”

John’s slow smile was like the breaking of the sun over the horizon on a viciously chilly morning. “I love you, you berk,” he whispered, and kissed the tip of Sherlock’s nose. “I love you as William and as Sherlock and as Holmes and I could probably be persuaded to love the ‘Scott’ part, too.” He arched his back in a languid stretch, the motion rippling Sherlock’s body on top of him as if Sherlock weighed nothing. “You still haven’t said what you want tonight, though. I find myself hoping it’s something that involves me finally taking off these pants.”

 _Oh god._ Sherlock swallowed hard at the sensation of their bodies sliding together, even through the sturdy fabric. “May I do it?” he asked, his voice sounding more like a Flake bar than the molten chocolate resonance he was aiming for.

“If you want.” John stretched his arms up over his head, showcasing the musculature on his lightly furred chest, then brought his hands back down and threaded his fingers through Sherlock’s curls. “I rather assumed you’d want to catalogue me all over, actually. Gather data.”

Sherlock couldn’t stand waiting anymore - he captured John’s mouth with a little grunt of desperation, which quickly turned to an outright moan as John skillfully ripped away control of the kiss and gave him more data than he could possibly assimilate at once. Some uncountable number of minutes later, John broke the kiss and tilted his head back - a clear invitation for Sherlock to drag his attentions downward, to the thin skin of John’s neck, the chance to to trail kisses down his collarbone to his sternum. The scar tissue from John’s gunshot wound stood out, white and angry and wrinkled, against the golden-tan of his pectorals. Not just sun in Afghanistan, then - John was faintly tan all over, a natural pigment in his skin tone which didn’t fade even in February. His chest hair was nearly the same golden-brown as the hair on his head, thick enough to tickle Sherlock’s face as he pressed kisses through it but not enough to obscure the evidence of too much worrying, stress eating, stress _not_ eating, sparse exercise. Nowhere near as much muscle as John used to have, not in the pictures from his army days which he’d always hidden in the Bible on the top shelf of his wardrobe. Worrying over _him._

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock whispered, pressing a kiss lower, to the soft skin of John’s belly. “I didn’t observe. I’m so sorry.”

“Mmm?” John had his head angled up, was smiling lazily down at him.

“I assumed you’d be able to delete me. To forget.”

“And did that work for you?” John asked quietly.

Sherlock shook his head, his nose brushing side-to-side over John’s navel. “I couldn’t bear to try.”

“Well then there you have it.” John propped himself up on his elbows, the better to actually see Sherlock’s face. “Are you going to work any farther south, there?” He bucked his hips once, a not-so-subtle hint that he was the only one left wearing anything at all. “Just asking, mind.”

“I . . .” Sherlock closed his eyes, sat back a bit so he could _think_ without John’s cock being right there within licking range. “You asked what I want.”

“Yeah. And you sound like you’re trying to work up the courage to say you don’t want sex.”

“No!” Sherlock nearly went limp at the thought. “I do! I just - I need you to be utterly selfish. Just this once.”

John went still beneath him, and Sherlock was immediately sure he’d said the wrong thing. But John just held his breath for several seconds (two, three, four, four and a half) before expelling the contents of his lungs in one sharp burst. “I don’t want to be mad at you, Sherlock,” he said quietly. Cutting to the heart of it, so typical for him. “I may not be able to turn it all the way off, even though I want to, but I can’t just-”

“Please,” Sherlock interrupted. “When I first walked in - what were you thinking then?”

John met his eyes steadily. “That I wanted to believe you were telling me the truth, but I couldn’t be certain. And I had to know for sure.”

“You were angry, though.”

“Yeah.” John sounded a bit sad. “Yes, that’s true. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

“I want you to, though.” Sherlock rolled his head back to stare up at the ceiling, absently willing it to tell him the correct words, the right way to say what he wanted. What he _needed._ “You’re right to be angry, and I can’t - I’m terrible at apologies, John. You know that. And I want to. I want you inside me and I want you to take what you want and not worry about being ‘good enough’ or impressing me with your sexual expertise. I need to give that to you. I came here prepared to offer everything - well this is it.” He sat back a bit further and spread his hands, baring his body to John. “You know I don’t ‘do’ this, but I want to. For you. I want to flay myself open and let you muck about inside, let you tinker with my mind and my heart and my body however you see fit. Because I need you to know that I - that your feelings are reciprocated.” He wanted to look back down, to see how John was reacting, but he didn’t know how he’d bear it if John wore a look of disgust. Sherlock kept his eyes averted and his open pose and waited.

Which was why he actually jolted in surprise when he felt John’s lips press gently against his sternum. “I love you too,” John murmured. “If you’re sure that’s what you want?”

Sherlock nodded mutely.

“Well then.”

One moment Sherlock was more or less kneeling over John’s prone body, the next moment John had flipped both of them in one easy move and was braced on one strong arm, hovering over him and pressing his hips down into the mattress. Sherlock sucked in a breath with the suddenness of it, and with the very definite spike of _lust_ which speared through him and left him with a renewed ache in his already-hard cock. He was too surprised to react, even when John traced his free hand up Sherlock’s sides, raising his arms one at a time and pinning them over his head.

“Don’t move those,” John whispered. “Let me taste you.”

Sherlock kept his arms frozen in place, his hands palms-up and half-curled on the duvet just beyond where he would have been able to feel the tickle of his own hair against his wrists. The position left his chest feeling open, exposed - a feeling which was only intensified when John ducked his head and _buried_ it in the crook of Sherlock’s neck.

“Always wanted to do this,” John murmured, nipping and sucking with only minimal attention to the bruises he was going to leave behind. “That bloody scarf - sometimes I tried to imagine you were wearing it to cover over the marks I’d left the day before. That it was a secret just between the two of us, because even though everyone teased us about being a couple, we were the only ones who knew the truth.”

“You can,” Sherlock groaned. “Do it.”

“Oh, I am.” John bit down on Sherlock’s trapezius, over the juncture between his neck and his shoulder - not hard enough to break the skin, not quite, but definitely enough to leave a clear impression of his teeth marks. A temporary dental record of _John,_ just him, no one else, which Sherlock could carry with him until it faded. Sherlock resolved to get a tattoo over the area before it disappeared, etching John’s tooth marks into his skin permanently-

But now John was trailing lower, nipping and laving Sherlock’s chest, abrading his nipples with his teeth, and Sherlock was _achingly_ desperate for some attention to his erection. He whined and shoved his hips upward plaintively, but John smacked him not-entirely-gently just over his sacroiliac joint. “Wait until I get there,” he commanded.

Sherlock relented, but he caught his lower lip in his teeth to muffle the embarrassing sounds he was quite sure he didn’t authorize his voice to be making.

John paid particular attention to Sherlock’s navel - prodding with his tongue, flattening his palms over Sherlock’s external oblique muscles and sliding inexorably inwards until the entire world had narrowed to just _John,_ his heat and his touch and the fan of his breath against Sherlock’s skin. John raised his head to shoot Sherlock a sadistically evil grin, then shifted downwards a bit more and sucked Sherlock’s cock down to the root.

 _“Oh! John! Prends-moi avec ta grosse bite! Baise-moi, John, s’il te plaît. Baise-moi.”_ Sherlock slammed his eyes shut and groaned - he could never bring himself to say these things in English, but somehow the French just rolled off his tongue. He needed everything, needed John to _conquer_ him, needed John on him and inside him and _fuck,_ the way John swirled his tongue just so as he sucked-

“Damn, that’s hot,” John murmured, pulling off just far enough to speak. “You just go ahead and talk to me in French all you want to, if it makes you feel better - I won’t get a word of it. No danger of me understanding or acquiescing to a single thing.” He wrapped his lips around Sherlock’s cock again, sinking down as far as he could and pulling back up oh-so-slowly until he let the head slip from between his lips with an audible _pop._ “Go on - beg for it. I have it on good authority you’ve never begged for anything in your life.”

 _Putain._ John had moved lower once again, tonguing and caressing Sherlock’s bollocks, looking totally at ease despite never having had the opportunity to do this before. Sherlock rolled his head from side to side (careful to keep his hands and wrists exactly where John had put them) and tried to focus on not coming yet. _“Tu m’as tué,”_ he groaned. _“Tu as pris mon cœur et tu l’as disséqué et maintenant je meurs avec le goût de tes lèvres sur les miennes.”_

“Mmmm,” John said, and slid his hands out to the sides so he could trace the sensitive crease where Sherlock’s thighs met his pelvis. Up and down, lateral and medial, distal and proximal. “I can’t wait to be inside you, to feel you tight around my cock. My first time with a man. I would invite you to give me some pointers, but, well . . .” He dipped his fingertips suddenly behind Sherlock’s thighs and urged his knees up, tilting Sherlock forward and granting a whole new angle of access to his bollocks and perineum. “I’ve done a bit of research. And I rather like the sound of your voice when you’re babbling in French.” He bent down and licked a slow, wet stripe up the entirety of what he could reach, all the way up to the tip of Sherlock’s cock. “I did recognize the _please,_ ” he added.

 _“Je te supplierais mille fois pour ne pas que tu t’arrêtes,”_ Sherlock admitted. _“S’il te plaît, John.”_

“Hold that thought.” John sat back - the absence of his touch feeling like a physical pain - and rummaged one-handed in the nearest drawer for-

 _Oh._ Sherlock didn’t say anything aloud, but John easily read the expression on his face.

“Shocked you didn’t have something like this here already,” he said with a bit of a smirk as he popped the cap and smeared a bit of lubricant on his right index finger. “You already knew I prepared - I saw you analyzing the sheets as we came in.” He settled back between Sherlock’s raised knees and stroked his other hand soothingly down Sherlock’s thigh. “This is what you want, right?”

 _“S’il te plaît,”_ Sherlock repeated.

“Right, then.” John went slowly, gently, circling Sherlock’s hole several times with that single finger before pressing just the tip inside and allowing Sherlock’s body time to adjust. It had been ages since Sherlock’s last time receiving anal penetration - it wasn’t something that lent itself well to a first-time encounter, and there usually wasn’t a second time - but John was careful and his other hand was pressing gentle circles into Sherlock’s abdomen and Sherlock found himself relaxing into the sensation. John pressed deeper, twisting a bit as he went, until his finger was sliding easily in and out and Sherlock couldn’t entirely prevent his hips from twitching anymore.

_“Mets-m'en un de plus!”_

“Gonna assume that means ‘more,’” John said with a hint of a grin, and added a second slippery finger. 

Sherlock groaned and forced his body to go lax. John was being utterly careful - not surprising, he was a doctor, he was good at reading patients’ nonverbal cues-

 _“Oh!”_ Sherlock’s eyes flew open.

“Found it,” John said, pride in his voice. “You like that, don’t you.”

 _“Oui! Maintenant, John. Baise-moi! Enfonce-moi ta grosse bite dans le cul.”_ Sherlock knew he was blushing even just at the idea of John understanding him, but John’s clever fingers were relentless, now, stretching and working at his hole and brushing his prostate on every third or fourth thrust and then Sherlock really was babbling, long strings of words with no thought of meaning behind them whatsoever, not even sticking with one particular language as he cried and moaned and pleaded for John to just finally _fuck him already._

“You’re lucky, you know,” John growled, sliding his fingers out one last time and finally stripping off his pants. “ _Fuck_ is the one word I happen to know in about a dozen languages, and I’m pretty sure you just used all of them.” He lined himself up, fingertips digging into Sherlock’s hips hard enough to leave bruises, then paused. “Last chance to say no, you know.”

“John, just bloody _fuck me!”_

“Well _that_ was perfectly clear.” John hauled Sherlock’s leg up over his good shoulder, planted his hands on the mattress on either side of Sherlock’s chest - stiff-armed to take his weight - and slowly slid home.

They both breathed out sighs of relief at the same time. Sherlock wrapped his other leg around John’s waist and hooked his heel over John’s back - the lopsided position was less than perfect, but it gave John room to maneuver and didn’t put undue stress on his scar. More importantly, it let John press even deeper inside him, a motion that made them both groan as John bottomed out and his pubic hair brushed Sherlock’s bollocks.

“So tight,” John moaned. “Fuck, Sherlock. I’m not going to last long.”

Sherlock wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t come already - somewhere between when the tip of John’s cock had touched his arsehole and when John had buried himself completely, Sherlock’s ever-busy brain had gone completely, blissfully _blank._ All that was left was the knowledge that John - _his John_ \- was literally _inside him._ Was groaning and trembling and it was _Sherlock_ making him feel that way, not some nameless faceless would-be girlfriend. _Him._ Sherlock’s cock was lying neglected between them, swollen and nearly purple and aching so badly, but John had said to keep his hands where they were and he wasn’t supposed to be the one giving direction-

 _“Touche-moi,”_ Sherlock begged. _"J'ai besoin que tu me touches, rien qu'un peu, John, je vais jouir tellement fort quand tu me toucheras, le plus fort que j'ai jamais joui.”_

John thrust once, twice more, then wrapped a warm hand around Sherlock and drove deep again and _putain,_ that was it. Sherlock arched with a silent cry and spent all over his own chest. Dimly he was aware of John stiffening above him, muttering (cursing?) to himself, then John was coming in long pulses which he could literally _feel_ inside his body. He pulled out and slumped down on top of Sherlock with absolutely no care for the mess now coating both of them and encircled as much of Sherlock’s ribcage as he could reach.

“That was brilliant,” he breathed against the corner of Sherlock’s jaw, sneaking in a lazy, close-mouthed kiss. “Utterly brilliant.”

Sherlock let his legs drop flat to the bed, not caring when he regained muscle control in his limbs. “You do know you say that out loud?” he murmured. He could feel John’s grin against his neck.

“Sorry - should I stop?” John whispered.

“No, it’s fine.” _It’s so much better than fine._

“Mmmmm.” John snuggled closer, his weight a welcome warmth despite the strange stickiness around Sherlock’s arse. “I’ve got a plan, you know.”

“You do?”

“Mmmmm. I’m going to get up in a minute, and grab us both a flannel so you don’t have to move. And I’m going to clean you off, and me, and then we’re going to get under these sheets and spoon together and sleep off our combined refractory periods until we’re ready to go again.”

 _“Oh.”_ Sherlock’s body was definitely not up for another round so soon, but his mind had no problem conjuring up a whole host of interesting images. “And tomorrow?”

John lifted his head just far enough to look Sherlock in the eye. “How long do you think it will take your brother to clear your name?”

 _God, don’t want to think about Mycroft while naked in bed with John._ “He said a few weeks, most likely.”

“Good.” John pressed a gentle kiss onto Sherlock’s lips. “Because I stocked the fridge, took off from the surgery, and for all anyone knows, I’m on vacation in Brighton to get some time away. I figured either we’d shag each other into the mattress or I’d need the time to nurse a broken heart. And I really do prefer the former option.”

Sherlock’s throat constricted. _And to think that I almost lost this . . ._ He wrapped his arms around John, reciprocating the hug, and squeezed until he could feel his own tears threatening to overflow his lashes.

“I love you too, John,” he whispered. “I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Prends-moi avec ta grosse bite! Baise-moi, John, s’il te plaît. Baise-moi.” = "Give me your big cock! Fuck me, John, please. Fuck me."
> 
> Putain = fuck (as an exclamation)
> 
> "Tu m’as tué. Tu as pris mon cœur et tu l’as disséqué et maintenant je meurs avec le goût de tes lèvres sur les miennes.” = "You've killed me. You've taken my heart and dissected it and now I die with the taste of your lips on mine."
> 
> “Je te supplierais mille fois pour ne pas que tu t’arrêtes." = "I would beg a million times if it would make you never stop."
> 
> "S’il te plaît" = "please"
> 
> “Mets-m'en un de plus!” = "Another!"
> 
> “Oui! Maintenant, John. Baise-moi! Enfonce-moi ta grosse bite dans le cul.” = "Yes! Now, John. Fuck me! Stick your giant cock in my arse."
> 
> “Touche-moi. J'ai besoin que tu me touches, rien qu'un peu, John, je vais jouir tellement fort quand tu me toucheras, le plus fort que j'ai jamais joui.” = "Touch me. I need you to touch me, just a little, John, I'm going to come so hard when you touch me, the hardest I've ever come."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Apology from John's POV](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3342479) by [hopelesslybenaddicted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopelesslybenaddicted/pseuds/hopelesslybenaddicted), [MonikaKrasnorada](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonikaKrasnorada/pseuds/MonikaKrasnorada)
  * [[Cover Art] for wendymarlowe's "The Apology"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3362063) by [fiorinda_chancellor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiorinda_chancellor/pseuds/fiorinda_chancellor)
  * [[Podfic] The Apology](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3676845) by [bagofthumbs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bagofthumbs/pseuds/bagofthumbs)




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